Collin's disruptor hummed against Jeffrey's temple, the House of Ivo insignia glowing cherry-red as its plasma core cycled to maximum discharge. Jeffrey's stolen pistol—Kintobor's K-99—pressed harder into Collin's lower gut.
They both pushed and pulled their respective triggers with a mixture of anticipation and dread. In a split second, one weapon jammed, a mere mechanical failure that would seal the fate of its holder, while the other shot smoothly, a piercing reminder of the brutal world they were trapped in.
One monster pretending to be a man succumbed to his wounds, his life extinguished, while the other stood in a haze of shock, somehow still alive, if barely, grappling with the weight of what had just happened.
In that fleeting moment, the fate of Mobius shifted permanently, setting off a chain reaction that would alter the course of their world forever, however minorly it seemed.
The scent of burning circuitry clung to the air, mingling with the metallic tang of spilled energon—Collin's fingers twitched around the disruptor's grip, still warm from firing. Jeffrey's body hadn't even hit the floor before static-laced alarms began blaring through the compound, their dissonant wails syncing with the throbbing ache in Collin's ribs.
He exhaled sharply through his nose, ignoring the way his vision blurred at the edges, and thumbed the disruptor's safety back on with a click that echoed louder than Jeffrey's body hitting the floor. Blood seeped into the grooves of the metal plating beneath them—not his, not yet—but close enough to count.
His failure of a brother Julian would've called this wasteful brutality—that was the joke, wasn't it? Standing over Jeffrey's corpse with his brother stolen prototype pistol from when Julian was still a man enough to make them, still clutched in the dead skunk's rigor-mortis grip. The irony curdled in Collin's throat like spoiled milk. He pried the K-99 free with a wet *pop* of dislocating fingers, the weapon's weight familiar and foreign all at once.
Julian had always hated wasting prototypes, but Collin couldn't help admiring the K-99's sleek design—still warm from Jeffrey's panicked grip. He traced the barrel's scorch marks with a thumb, imagining Julian's disgust if he saw his masterpiece used for something as crude as drunken murder.
But hey, there was a reason the two fell out.
Then, realization hit him violently.
He just killed Jeffrey St. Croix.
The right hand man of King Maxx Acorn, the disgusting squirrel himself.
Jeffrey St. Croix.
Dead.
Collin couldn't help but laugh—a sharp, jagged sound that bounced off the blood-slick walls—as he flicked Jeffrey's cooling corpse with the barrel of the K-99. "You always did talk too much," he mused, watching the skunk's vacant eyes stare accusingly at the ceiling. Static from the alarms buzzed against his skin like angry hornets, mixing with the coppery stench of spilled energon and the distant wails of Sector 7's collapsing infrastructure.
Somewhere beneath the chaos, he could almost hear Julian screaming about wasted prototypes—but what was one more corpse in a world ruled by Mobians built on them?
Then there were the other Mobians in the bar.
Witnesses.
What there couldn't be any of.
And so Collin began to kill them all.
One by one.
As he ignored their screams.
Sure it might be inhuman, but these things weren't even Overlanders.
They were at best half naked animals.
The bar's patrons were slumped over tables, booths, and the cracked bartop as the band of jackals had long since left—each with a neat plasma burn between their eyes courtesy of Jeffrey's own pistol.
Collin spun the K-99 lazily around his finger before holstering it, stepping over Jeffrey's corpse like it was just another puddle in the war-torn streets of Maxxopolis. The bar's flickering neon sign outside cast jagged shadows across the carnage—*The Tipsy Skunk* now serving its final round.
He licked a drop of energon off his finger, savoring the electric bitterness—*like licking a battery coated in irony.* The bodies would bring drones soon, but Collin had already pried open the bar's floor grate, the metal squealing like a tortured Mobian. Below, the sewer stench hit him like a slap: rotting mushrooms and something unnervingly sweet.
He vaulted down without hesitation, because *of course* the secret exit reeked of dead rodents and industrial runoff—couldn't have one goddamn thing go smoothly. The sludge seeped into his boots with a squelch that made his spine crawl, but Collin smirked anyway.
He just had to get to Spagonia, to his second cousin Irving Pavlov, the only man who could forge a new identity from thin air—for the right price, of course. Irving's underground clinic smelled like antiseptic and betrayal, but Collin had learned long ago that loyalty was just another currency in Mobius' shadow economy.
He adjusted the stolen patrol cap over his ears, the fabric itching with the previous owner likely flees now decomposing in the sewer behind him. The stench clung worse than battlefield guilt—but guilt was for civilians and fools.
Collin smirked at the checkpoint guards ahead, their rifles slung lazily as they played cards under the flickering streetlight. "Evening, gents," he called, flashing Julian's old I.D. badge with a magician's flourish. "Maintenance sweep for Sector 7's grid failure." Their bored nods were more satisfying than any salute; idiots never looked closely at bloodstained boots.
He made his way to Maxxopolis's city limits without another obstacle—no alarms, no ambushes—just the eerie hum of distant drones sweeping sectors he'd already left behind. Collin couldn't help but chuckle at the irony: Jeffrey had spent years helping to build King Maxx Acorns's surveillance state, yet here he was, slipping through its cracks like a ghost.
The K-99 weighed heavy against his hip—not with guilt, but possibility. Collin spat into the sewer's brackish flow, watching the phlegm swirl between floating rat carcasses. *Jeffrey's last contribution to society,* he mused, adjusting his stolen patrol cap to shade his eyes from Maxxopolis's garish neon glow.
Ahead, the city limit checkpoint's floodlights carved jagged shadows across the pavement, their harsh glow catching the gleam of Collin's stolen badge as he adjusted it with deliberate nonchalance. He could taste the tension in the air—sharp as ozone before a storm—but the guards barely glanced up from their card game, their rifles leaning against the booth like forgotten umbrellas. *Too easy,* he mused, flashing a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"Grid's acting up again," he drawled, tapping the I.D. badge against the checkpoint scanner with deliberate imprecision—letting its flickering hologram disguise the blood crusted under his nails. The guards waved him through without looking up from their card game, their indifference more damning than any tribunal.
Collin smirked, adjusting his stolen patrol cap lower over his brow as he stepped into the neon-drenched alleyways beyond, where the stench of fried street food couldn't mask the underlying rot. He flexed his fingers—still tacky with half-dried energon—and debated tossing Jeffrey's K-99 into the next dumpster. But sentimentality was a weakness he couldn't afford, not when Sector 7's collapse would ripple outward like shrapnel in an open wound.
Soon he was far enough away from the city's outer limits to bring out his phone as the sun began to rise—one of Julian's old prototypes, still the best model most likely despite it's age.
He dialed the now all too familiar number.
"Hello Irving," Collin purred into the prototype phone, his fingers tapping against its cracked screen—a predator's rhythm. Blood dripped from his sleeve onto the pavement, each drop echoing louder than the static-laced silence on the other end. Irving Pavlov's sigh crackled through the receiver, equal parts exasperation and amusement.
"Let me guess—you need a new face, a clean identity, and you don't plan on bringing your bitch and little brat?"
"You truly know me too well my dear Irving..."
------------
The dichotomy should've been terrifying, but it wasn't.
Not anymore at least.
Not when he was the first person outside of his family to truly see him and not just ignore him like a footnote in a war report.
Patch exhaled sharply, flexing his bandaged paw as the palace corridors blurred around him—each step carrying him closer to the throne room, where Sonic undoubtedly held court amidst the wreckage of King Maxx Acorn's regime.
The scent of ozone and burnt metal clung to the air, a testament to the hedgehog's latest display of controlled anarchy. He could hear the whispers trailing behind him like shadows—*menace, strategist, usurper*—but Sonic almost certainly merely adjusted his gloves, letting the weight of their fear settle into the cracks of the throne room's shattered marble.
He was in bed now, still awake despite the hour—his claws tracing idle circles on the ceiling's cracks, mapping constellations in the plaster like the child counting sheep he was.
Patch's claws dug into the mattress as the palace's ambient hum—somewhere between a groan and a purr—itched under his skin like phantom static. He rolled onto his side, and then he saw it.
A note.
A single folded slip of paper tucked beneath his pillow—one of the princess's royal stationery sheets, the edges singed black as if someone had debated burning it mid-sentence. Patch unfolded it with deliberate slowness, the parchment whispering secrets against his claws.
> *"Meet me where the chokecherries grow wild. 5am. Come armed."*
No signature.
Well, that just meant he had six hours to sleep before another damn secret meeting—likely another political execution disguised as breakfast diplomacy. Patch exhaled through his nose, counting the ceiling cracks like tactical weak points. The note smelled faintly of Sally's royal wax seal and something sharper.
Gun oil, maybe?
He tucked it into his glove with deliberate nonchalance, before closing his eyes—because fuck insomnia when there was scheming to be done at dawn. The palace groaned around him, its ancient pipes sighing like sentient prisoners (because who knows if they were), but Patch ignored it all—sleep came swift and dreamless, save for flashes of Sally's claws wrapped around a dagger hilt, glinting metallic under the polluted sunrise.
Six hours later, he stood ankle-deep in wild chokecherry bushes, their sour tang mixing with the musk of damp earth and the faintest whiff of Sally's perfume—lavender and gunpowder. Her silhouette emerged from the fog like a blade unsheathed, her posture rigid, eyes scanning the tree line with military precision.
Patch didn't move.
He knew better than to startle a monarch mid-coup.
Soon here eyes landed directly on to him—calculating and somewhat cold—but Patch didn't flinch. He'd seen that look before, usually on King Maxx Acorn's right before someone lost their head. Sally's claws tapped against her holstered pistol, a rhythmless staccato that matched the not distant enough thrum of Sector 7's failing reactor.
"You're here," Sally stated—not a greeting, but an assessment.
Yet it wasn't fully cold now.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world, princess," Patch drawled, rolling the title off his tongue like a loaded die—knowing full well she hated the formalities now. His bandaged paw twitched toward his own concealed blade, the motion casual enough to dismiss as a stretch if she called him on it.
The predawn light caught the scar running down Sally's muzzle, turning the old wound into a gilded crack in her royal facade.
She snorted, something almost amused flashing behind those cold eyes, "Tell me Antoine, what do you know about Anarchic Titans?"
Patch stiffened—*that* was her play? After weeks of dancing around Sector 7 sabotage and whispered Zone of Noise prophecies, she drops *that* bomb casually, like asking about breakfast menus?
His claws flexed involuntarily, the scent of chokecherries suddenly cloying. "Enough to know that they're the type that changes the course of history."
Sally grinned—a razor's edge of teeth—before walking even closer to him. "Then you'll appreciate how Sonic is most likely the newest one himself."
Patch's fur stood on end—not from fear, but the electric realization that she'd just handed him a weapon sharper than any blade. Sonic, an *Anarchic Titan*?
The thought was ludicrous, delicious.
He exhaled sharply, tasting iron and the ghost of last night's choices. "You truly believe that?"
"It seems plausible."
"Perhaps I'm wrong, but aren't Anarchic Titans... well anarchic in nature? And Sonic himself seems obsessed with order itself it seems."
Patch's claws twitched against his holstered disruptor as Sally's muzzle twitched in what might've been amusement—if the princess still remembered how to smile without calculating collateral damage. The rising sun caught the silver threads in her torn royal sash, turning the frayed fabric into something between a battle standard and a noose.
"That's what makes him so interesting, it seems," she murmured, her voice low enough that the wind almost stole it. "He goes against any rule and seemingly every possible exception to the rules, perhaps that is what it truly means to be an Anarchic Titan..." Sally's claws tapped against her disruptor's grip—once, twice—before abruptly holstering it with a snap that made Patch's ear twitch.
The silence lingered thick as the fog between them, until she exhaled sharply through her nose, her breath curling white in the dawn chill. "You've heard the reports from your father. You've seen what he can do. The question isn't whether he's a Titan—it's what kind."
"So what now?" Patch asked, flicking a stray chokecherry leaf from his sleeve—casual as if discussing weather forecasts instead of world-ending myths. The rising sun gilded Sally's claws as she unsheathed a data pad, its screen cracked but still displaying footage of Sonic mid-battle (it was more so a massacre if anything) in the night—his quills crackling with bioelectric fury as he tore through King Maxx Acorn's war drones like tissue paper.
"Now?" Sally's grin was all teeth now, "Now we go visit him."
Patch slowly smiled, "Well then, lead the way there princess," his voice smooth and oddly amused—though his claws curled tighter around his disruptor's grip.
"With pleasure Antoine, with pleasure."
------------
Ooma Arachnis tilted her head, mandibles clicking in consideration as Wally Naugus held the fractured Beryl aloft—its sickly light casting jagged shadows across her masked chitinous face. "Six more?" she echoed, segmented claws twitching toward the gem with unnatural hunger. Behind her, her arachnid brood skittered closer, their many eyes reflecting the Beryl's glow like pinprick stars in a void.
Wally Naugus flexed his chimeric lobster claw, watching the way Ooma Arachnis's posture shifted—subtly predatory, subtly protective—and wondered not for the first time if her loyalty was born of genuine care or simply the absence of better options.
But did it really matter anymore at this point?
"King Maxx Acorn truly need that much power? Well then, ignoring the fact that the Anarchy Beryl are cursed, unstable, and outright will corrupt whatever sap touches it—not to mention the fact that they are supposedly all powerful, but why does he need six more?"
Ooma Arachnis clicked her mandibles thoughtfully, watching Wally Naugus with an eerie stillness that only a spider could achieve as Wally Naugus began to explain—his voice warped by the Zone of Noise's dissonant hum. "Power isn't about *need*," he rasped, the Beryl's glow twisting his features into something grotesque, "it's about leverage—and King Maxx Acorn plans to choke Mobius with it."
"And what are you going to do about it, you know about your... condition?" Ooma Arachnis's voice dripped with venomous amusement as she gestured to Wally Naugus's lobster claw—half-transformed, half-crystalized now in a grotesque mockery of evolution's intent.
The Beryl pulsed lazily in his grip, its sickly glow flickering in time with the Zone of Noise's dissonant hum, casting jagged shadows across the cavern walls.
"That I do plan to do something about it Ooma Arachnis, that I do plan to do something about it..."
"And I don't suppose you'll tell me about it?" Ooma Arachnis hissed, her brood pressing closer like a living tide of chitin and venom. Wally Naugus merely chuckled—a wet, gurgling sound—before tossing the Beryl into the air with casual menace, letting it hover between them on warped Zone energy. "Wouldn't you prefer a surprise, my dear spider? Oh well, I'll just tell you the first step for now..."
"And that is?" Ooma Arachnis pressed, her brood tensing in eerie synchronization—legs coiled like springs, fangs glistening with venomous anticipation. Wally Naugus let the Beryl drop into his claw with a wet *plop*, its glow casting jagged shadows across his warped smirk. "First," he rasped, leaning in until his breath fogged her chitinous mask, "we find my old master, the first Ixis himself."
Ooma Arachnis nodded, and turned to her children—legs twitching—before flicking one claw toward the Zone's shifting horizon. "Then we hunt," she declared, her brood surging forward in a chittering tide, their countless eyes gleaming with predatory glee. Wally Naugus grinned—an expression more jagged than comforting—as he his chimeric lobster claw started flexing in anticipation.
The Zone of Noise pulsed around them, its dissonant hum growing louder—or perhaps that was just the Beryl's influence, gnawing at Wally Naugus's already fractured sanity. He flexed his lobster claw, the chitinous appendage twitching with phantom pain as Ooma Arachnis's brood skittered ahead, their many legs tapping out a rhythm that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Yes, King Maxx Acorn would get his seven precious Anarchy Beryl—right after he choked on them.
And that was right after his very own plan went into action.
And so they all traveled to another opening in the Zone of Noise to go back to Mobius—it was a long trip, longer than any of them had anticipated, and yet none of them complained—not even the youngest of Ooma Arachnis's children—as they knew exactly what was at stake.
And yet despite the grimness of the situation, there was still room for laughter—perhaps it was Ooma Arachnis's dry sarcasm—perhaps it was her children's sharp wit—perhaps it was Wally Naugus's very own dark humor—but the trip wasn't as grim as it should've been—it was almost... enjoyable.
And soon they arrived to another portal to Mobius—one that pulsed with an eerie green glow, its edges fraying like torn fabric. Wally Naugus hesitated for the first time in decades, his lobster claw twitching toward the Beryl wedged into his chestplate. "You'd think after all these years, stepping through wouldn't feel like swallowing broken glass," he muttered, earning a chorus of rasping laughter from Ooma Arachnis's brood.
"Perhaps, but the very first Ixis must be found if your oh so mysterious plan you have right now is to commence."
Wally Naugus's grin widened, "Perhaps you have a point there Ooma Arachnis."
And so, one by one, they all stepped through the eerie and acidic green portal onto the other side onto some surprisingly distant corner of Mobius.